Re: tar and --sparse

[Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de>]

On 2010-09-22 22:40 +0200, T o n g wrote:

> I created a Linux system tar ball without using the --sparse switch. 
> The .tar.bzip2 tar ball is only of 1.5G in size. However, restoring such 
> tar ball into a 10G partition would fail:
>
>  Cannot write: No space left on device
>
> It fails even if I've used the --sparse switch when restoring. 10G is 
> more than 6 times bigger than 1.5G. Does it really require that much of 
> space, or I'm doing something wrong.

The GNU tar documentation says this about the --sparse option:

     This option is meaningful only when creating or updating archives.
     It has no effect on extraction.

HTH,
    Sven